Peter Robinson tells a surprising story of his days as a presidential speechwriter.
Robinson visited Berlin in May 1987 to gather material for a speech Ronald Reagan would give a few weeks later. He recalls being briefed by an American diplomat. "Don't mention the Wall," he was told, "it will upset people. And besides, people here have gotten used to it."
At dinner with a dozen Berliners, Robinson related what he had been told. "Is it true?" he asked. "Have you gotten used to the wall?" Robinson writes of the conversation that ensued:
The Elzes and their guests glanced at each other uneasily. I assumed I'd proved to be just the sort of brash, tactless American the diplomat was afraid the president might send. Then one of the men raised his arm and pointed. "My sister lives 20 miles in that direction," he said. "I haven't seen her in more than two decades. Do you think I can get used to that?"
Another man spoke. Each morning, he explained, on his way to work he walked past the same guard tower. Each morning the same soldier gazed down at him through binoculars. "That soldier and I speak the same language. We share the same history. But one of us is a zookeeper and the other is an animal, and I am never certain which is which."
Our hostess broke in. A gracious woman, she had grown angry. Her face was red. She made a fist with one hand, then pounded it into the palm of the other. "If this man Gorbachev is serious with his talk of glasnost and perestroika," she said, "he can prove it. He can get rid of this wall."
Those Berliners saw a reality far different from that visible to the American diplomats stationed in the same city.
When Robinson returned to Washington, he made Frau Elz's comment the central passage of the speech. The State Department, the National Security Council, the Secretary of State, and many others in the administration tried to squelch it, calling the demand to tear down the wall provocative and naive.
Reagan was adamant: It was the right thing to say. He had listened to the actual experiences and desires of Berliners--rather than to the professional's calls to be "realistic." And he divined an underground stream that was soon to rush to the surface. Soon after, he stood in front of the Berlin wall and delivered a challenge. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Two and half years later, the border between East and West Berlin was opened, the Wall demolished. Today, only paving stones and small sections of wall mark where it once stood.
Countless conversations and actions contributed to that momentous event, and many accounts could be told of those days.
Still, I am struck by how a single dinner conversation--and the willingness to listen to it--may have shaped our sense of what was possible and influenced the course of history.